


Catch Us In the Mirror (And It Looks a Lot Like Love)

by J (jaywright)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Gender, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 11:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19851991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaywright/pseuds/J
Summary: "I doubt.  I question, if only to myself.  I lack faith.  You?  Crowley, you are the least of my sins."





	Catch Us In the Mirror (And It Looks a Lot Like Love)

_3980: He is not what he says he is._  
______________

In the garden, after the rain, Aziraphale watched the sky, and Crawly watched Aziraphale.

"'t's blue," he said eventually, just for something to say, and Aziraphale's eyes fell from the heavens almost reluctantly, finding him. "I like blue." He peered upward. "Looking for something in particular up there?"

"Someone," Aziraphale replied distractedly.

"Ah." There really was nothing to say to that, so Crawly didn't try. Instead, he hummed tunelessly until Aziraphale shot an annoyed glance in his direction.

"Don't you have some tempting or corrupting to do?"

"No one around to tempt or corrupt, now that you've sent them off," Crawly pointed out. He eyed Aziraphale speculatively. "Unless…"

"No," Aziraphale said flatly. "Not me."

"Pity. Good time, that, tempting angels."

"I have far too much to do," Aziraphale objected.

"Funny, because it looks to me like what you're doing is standing there staring moodily at the sky."

"Yes, well. I wouldn't expect _you_ to understand." Aziraphale stretched his wings, turning away from Crawly. "Anyhow, I might explore what produce this garden can provide other than those apples. I feel like I haven't eaten in weeks."

" _Have_ you eaten?" Crawly asked. "Ever?"

"Of course I have," Aziraphale said. "Haven't you? It's lovely."

"Angels don't need to, though, do they?"

"Who said anything about 'need'?"

"Is your kind allowed to do things just because you want to, then? That's not blasphemous or some rot?"

"Of course not," Aziraphale said automatically, then paused to consider. "It's not, is it?"

Crawly shrugged. "I'm hardly the expert."

"You should be! Blasphemy's kind of your thing."

"I tend to go for more low grade inconveniences, myself. Leading them into making their own mistakes, you know? Much more satisfying that way."

"Yes well. That aside, I'm not getting any less hungry standing here."

"You're not getting any more hungry either," Crawly pointed out. "You don't have a stomach."

Aziraphale was already turning away into the trees, not listening to him. "Are you coming, then?"

The obvious answer was no. Of course he was not following some angel, searching out food he didn't need or even want in this abandoned prison while a whole world awaited him on the outside of the walls. 

That was the obvious answer, so it was not the one that Crawly chose.

"Do you think there are plums?" he asked as he made his way into the foliage, following the sound of Aziraphale's footsteps. "I don't think I'd like a plum. Or an orange. Or a pear. Or much of anything, really. Remind me why I'm doing this again?"

"Haven't the foggiest," Aziraphale's voice filtered distantly back to him, followed by, "Ooh! Figs!"

Crawly shook his head, laughed aloud, and followed Aziraphale deeper into the garden, leaving the expanse of the open blue sky behind them, hidden above a canopy of green.  
______________

Aziraphale's eyebrows raised as the rain started pelting down against them. "Shem, Crawly? On a first name basis with Noah's family, are you? How long have you been in town, exactly?"

"Well. Long enough for a few drinks with a few people," he said evasively. "Turns out boat building is a thirsty business."

“You know, you don’t actually have to let me prattle on when you already know perfectly well what I’m about to tell you.”

“I like your prattling. Anyway, it’s fun to hear the ways you bend over backwards to justify the things your lot are up to.”

“I don’t need to justify anything to you, Crawly.”

“And yet, you do it anyway. Why is that?" He leaned closer, examining Aziraphale. "Perhaps I'm not the one you need to be convincing. Feeling a little dimming of the old faith candle, are we?"

"No! Certainly not. The Lord...works in mysterious ways."

" _Very_ mysterious, yes."

They were soaked through, and the crowd around them was scattering. Crawly looked around them. "Care to find some high ground, angel?" he asked. "Of the literal sort, rather than the moral, of course." He swept up one of his wide sleeves, holding it over Aziraphale's head and seeing Aziraphale blink the raindrops from his eyelashes.

"Oh," he said distractedly. "Thank you. Yes, well then."

"China, you said? Might be safe from…" he nodded around them. "All of this?"

"Might be," Aziraphale agreed.

"Well, shall we?"

Aziraphale looked up at him like he was going to gently remind him that they had no business being near each other, certainly no business wandering off to go touristing together while God smote humanity, but instead his eyes twinkled a little, and his nose wrinkled up with a smile as he said, "Why, indeed we shall."  
______________

"Come to smirk at the poor bugger, have you?" The words came out more biting than Crowley meant for them to, but this day had already been more than enough without Aziraphale showing up. Enough of humanity and their endless choices (wrong choices, always wrong), and their cruelty. Some days, Crowley was driven by their fallibility, but on this night, the sun was setting behind a scene that was truly nauseating, and Crowley couldn't handle the thought of the angel standing there smugly, going on and on about some Plan.

When their eyes met, though, Aziraphale looked as pained as Crowley felt, shifting uncomfortably at Crowley's side like he wanted to burst forward and intervene. The word "Plan" never came from his lips. 

Instead, he stood there in the dimming light beside Crowley, and he prayed.  
______________

"Take me some." Crowley's eyes were on the basin as he felt Aziraphale come up behind him.

"Oh, don't, Crowley," Aziraphale pleaded. "We've only just found each other again, don't ruin this."

"Found each other," Crowley repeated. "As if I'd _lost_ you. I knew exactly where you were the whole time. And of course I'm going to ruin things. It's what I _do_."

There was something perverse in him that wanted to reach out, to touch just a drop of the holy water, to feel _holiness_ again, if only against his skin, even if it destroyed him. Instead, he felt warmth, softness, Aziraphale's fingers tangling into his.

"Do come on," Aziraphale said. "It's probably not even holy anymore, what with all the falling concrete."

"Aziraphale…"

" _No_ , Crowley. Don't make me stop speaking to you for another hundred years."

Crowley sighed, looking upward at the remains of the ruined building. "Is that really how it works, with the concrete?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think it might be a question of proportions? Or sediment, possibly? It's been some time since I blessed any water." Crowley's eyes didn't leave the basin, and Aziraphale sighed deeply beside him. "Ask me for something else, Crowley. Ask me for anything, and I'll give it to you. You understand that this isn't me not wanting to give you what you want, don't you? It's not even about not wanting to disobey - " he gestured upwards. "It's...well. I can't _lose_ you, Crowley."

"You're not going to, angel," Crowley said. "I'm right here." Their fingers were still intertwined, so he gave Aziraphale's a squeeze, then winced, his feet letting out an audible sizzle.

"Oh!" Aziraphale glanced down. "For heaven's sake!" He tugged Crowley's hand, practically dragging him from the church and out onto the perfect, unconsecrated street.

Crowley let out a great sigh of relief, dropping Aziraphale's hand and leaning over to rub futilely at his feet through his shoes. "Oh," he said, "that is much better."

"You blessed fool," Aziraphale said fondly, and Crowley grimaced.

"Ugh," he said. "Don't."

"I will. I do. _Bless_ you, Crowley. For saving me, and these." He _hugged_ the bag of books to his chest, and it was simply _too_ much.

"Oh, buzz off, angel," Crowley muttered. "Take your damn books and your damn blessings and get out of here."

"I don't think I'm going anywhere, actually," Aziraphale said. "I quite like London, you know."

"In the middle of a blitz?"

"Well, it's not its finest hour, I'll admit. But it means there's good to be done here! I do so like having good to do."

Crowley laughed, shaking his head. "You're impossible. Don't go expecting me to go saving you again out there. One good deed is enough for me for a couple centuries." He shuddered. "I feel dirty."

"It's just the soot, darling," Aziraphale pointed out. "And the concrete." He eyed Crowley. "I never expect it, you know. You to save me. And yet, you keep doing it anyway."

"Yes, well. Gets boring around here without someone on the other end of the chessboard, doesn't it?"

Aziraphale looked pleased. "You knew where I was," he said, which Crowley had been hoping they were going to just coast right past. "The whole time."

"Don't flatter yourself, angel," Crowley said. "I know a lot of things. Only some of them are about you."

Aziraphale did look flattered, though, and he looped his arm into Crowley's. "I'm glad you're here," he said, steering them down the road, "because I very much want to show you this little space I've found. It's quite destroyed right now, but I do think that given some time and some care…" he continued, and Crowley let his attention wander, letting the warm easy patter of Aziraphale's voice wash over him as they made their way together down the shattered London street.  
______________

The question came after the apocalypse, and maybe Crowley should have expected it. Maybe he should have anticipated Aziraphale's messy, tangled relationship with heaven to fold in on itself like the house of cards it was, but if he had bothered considering it at all, he certainly wouldn't have thought that it would happen on a Tuesday.

They were in the bookshop, Crowley playing a truly diabolically monetized mobile game that he had had a hand in the development of, Aziraphale staring at a book as if he'd forgotten entirely how words worked. Crowley was pleasantly tipsy, but he started to suspect that Aziraphale had passed that point when he set his book aside and crossed his legs, propping his glass on his knee and staring at Crowley intently.

"Something on my face?" Crowley asked without looking up, and Aziraphale started hard enough at his voice that Crowley felt it through the sofa.

"What? No. Well, yes, actually." Aziraphale gestured to his glasses, so Crowley reached up indulgently to remove them, pausing his game and letting his eyes flicker up to meet Aziraphale's. Aziraphale looked pleased, then immediately conflicted.

"So?" Crowley prompted.

"What did it feel like?" Aziraphale burst out, the words tangling together in his haste to get them out before he could think better of it.

"You're going to have to narrow that one down for me," Crowley said, but flatly, without any real meaning behind it. He _knew_ what Aziraphale was asking, and the thought of answering him filled Crowley with more emotions than he really liked to consider himself capable of.

"Seems to be a big thing not to know about a person, is all," Aziraphale said. "You, here, a - " he dropped his voice into a hushed tone like he had to keep from being overheard, "a _Fallen angel_. We've known each other for millennia, and somehow, it's never come up."

"It's never come up because I haven't _wanted_ it to. What say we just keep it buried, where it belongs?"

"I can't," Aziraphale said, sounding miserable. 

"Don't ask me this, angel. Please. Ask me for something else. Ask me for anything, and I'll give it to you."

Aziraphale's eyes flashed. "Don't. Crowley, don't do that."

Crowley let out a low frustrated growl, dropping his head into his hands and raking his fingers through his hair. When he looked up again, his words were sharp, hurtful. "You want the gory details? Because I'll give them to you. You don't strike me as the type to want to hear about people you care about getting tortured, but maybe you'll surprise me. Maybe you'll like it."

" _Crowley_." Aziraphale's voice was tight and injured. "I don't _want_ this. I don't want any of this. But it's what I have, isn't it? You, you're what I have." He drank deeply and moodily before adding, "You might be _all_ I have."

"Of course I'm all you have. What, do you think you've still got heaven in your corner? Hell, now, maybe? _Humanity_? I'm it, Aziraphale. I'm what you've got."

"And I'm what you have," Aziraphale said. "And yet, you still won't tell me."

" _Tell_ you! As if it's storytime! Come on then, let me tuck you into bed and tell you about how once upon a time there was an angel who wasn't an angel anymore. Who had his wings ripped from him for wanting honesty. Wanting the truth. Wanting answers, and enlightenment, and to _know_ things. The audacity of him!"

"Your...wings…" Aziraphale repeated weakly.

"What, these old things?" Crowley asked. He knelt forward on the couch, shifting, stretching, seeing the way Aziraphale's eyes went wide at the shimmering void that opened behind him. "Why, these babies are practically right off the lot. Spanking new, given the relative timeframe of our existence. Could have gone any which way with them, really. Dagon's got a fancy set of bat leathers. Have you ever seen Beelzebub's? The sound of them all, like a swarm in the distance…" he shuddered. "Positively hideous. Some don't even bother growing them back. But for me…" He let his wings flare out, enjoying the stretch of his muscles. "These felt like the thing."

"Yes." Aziraphale's expression was soft and pained. "They do. They feel like you."

Crowley made them vanish in a puff of atmosphere, gravity lurching around him, leaving Aziraphale looking mildly queasy.

"Crowley…"

"You asked."

"Yes." Aziraphale was quiet and subdued. "I did." He kept quiet for a long moment before finally asking, "So that's always how it happens, then? They...you...lose your wings?"

"No, not always. That's how it works for angels, archangels. You know, the lower-type angely bits. Seraphim? Cherubim?" He shrugged. "You've got me. The only one of those hoity-toity types worth a toss was...well."

"Lucifer," Aziraphale supplied.

Crowley felt an almost nostalgic smile tugging at his lips. "Lucifer. And he was a special case, wasn't he? Blasted cherub, and the most grounded bastard I ever…" he trailed off. "Heh. Pun unintended."

Aziraphale let out a giggle, sounding on the edge of hysteria. "Apt, though," he said, and looked immediately horrified with himself. "Oh dear. It's not funny, is it?"

Crowley's smile turned bitter. "It's a little funny."

Aziraphale choked on his laughter, and when Crowley looked at him, he found that there were tears in his eyes. "Crowley. I didn't know."

"You didn't need to know," Crowley said. "Pray that you never do." He couldn't handle Aziraphale's expression of distress a moment longer, so he reached across the couch to touch him, dropping a hand to wrap around his on the stem of his glass. "Aw," he said, trying for light and easy, and mostly failing, "I'm alright, angel. Anyway, I think I look better like this, don't you?"

Aziraphale sniffled. "Well, yes," he admitted. "You wouldn't be half as stylish if they looked like mine."

"That's right." Crowley patted his fingers, then pulled away to fold against his arm of the couch. 

Aziraphale was still watching him, though, his eyes tracing the spaces where Crowley's wings should have been, and it made Crowley want to shudder right out of his skin, to discorporate just to never have to see that look on Aziraphale's face ever again. "It...hurt, then."

"Hurt! Leave it to you to reduce it to some mortal concept like that, something you can make sense of with _this_." He pinched his own arm for emphasis. "It's not like that, angel. It's _nothing_ like that."

"Then _tell_ me!"

"You're going to have to get me a damn sight drunker before that's going to happen, my dear." A fresh glass of wine appeared immediately in his hand, and he toasted Aziraphale mockingly before taking an appreciative sip. "Oh. That's good. Reminds me of that bottle we split on the bank of the Seine that time. You remember - "

"Of course I remember, Crowley," Aziraphale almost snapped. "I remember everything we've done." He miracled a new pour into his own glass, drinking sullenly, but he couldn't keep a slight approving smile from tugging at his lips. "Oh," he agreed, "that _is_ nice." They drank companionably for a while in silence that was only a little strained, until Aziraphale finally said, "While we're on the subject of what we remember and what we don't, I've never asked. _Do_ you remember? Being an angel?"

Crowley swallowed. "Yes." His voice was rough and unfamiliar.

"What do you remember about it?"

"Light." He had meant to stay quiet, to make Aziraphale work for it, but the answer came so simply that it just burst from him. "I remember...Her light."

Aziraphale made a choked sound, and Crowley looked up at him, distressed at the pain on his face. "I...don't. Not really. I remember what it felt like to lose it, but…"

"Aziraphale." Crowley crawled across the couch to take him in his arms, bundling him close like he could somehow replace an inexplicable godly presence with his own wiry arms. "You _live_ Her light, don't give me that. You're unbearable, just filthy shiny with it. Why do you think I wear sunglasses all the time?" It was a weak joke, but he could feel Aziraphale's shoulders shake with what he hoped was a laugh. "Look, maybe it doesn't feel like it did, back before humanity, when it was just your lot...just _us_. But that doesn't mean something's broken. Maybe everything's working out exactly the way that it should."

"Maybe," Aziraphale admitted, sniffling a little, and Crowley pulled back, staying within arm's reach, but giving him some space. "It's just...I can't very well go asking the others, now, can I? 'Hello there, Michael, happen to have felt the light and love of the Lord lately, have you? Oh, no, not for any reason in particular, certainly not that I haven't felt it for myself in a few millennia…'"

Crowley chuckled. "No, I suppose that one wouldn't go over very big. But look. You're out here, doing your Deeds, tossing out a Blessing here and there, maybe passing around some Encouragement and some Good Will, and like...bread, or whatever. Whatever it is that people like you do to 'help.' You're working at it. You're trying. That's more than I'd say for one other motherfucker I've met from heaven."

"But I _have_ to try, don't you see? I have to care, I have to be a _good_ angel! Because if I don't - "

"If you don't, what?"

"Well. You've seen the others. Who will?"

Crowley laughed. "Ah, that dedication to the cause! That's your problem, right there. That's what you get for being a being of faith."

"I…" Aziraphale looked miserable, like he was caving into himself, crumbling into nothing right there in front of Crowley. "I don't know that I _am_ , anymore." The words were nearly impossible for him to get out, and when his eyes looked up to meet Crowley's, the expression there was something halfway between resignation and reckless abandon. "I don't know that I have any faith left, Crowley."

"You do."

"I don't! Or, well, I don't _know_ that I do, and that's what faith is, isn't it? Knowing?"

"No," Crowley said. "Of course it's not. It's deciding _not_ to know. Keeping your questions and doubts to yourself. That's faith. And it's a load of bollocks."

"Yes, well, you _can_ think that, can't you?"

"If what you suspect is true," Crowley pointed out, "so can you."

Aziraphale's eyes flashed. "Oh, and what's that? What you think I suspect?"

Crowley shrugged expansively. "It's obvious, isn't it?" He waited for Aziraphale to say something else, but he just sat there instead, looking at Crowley almost defiantly. "You're Fallen."

The words wrung a gasp from Aziraphale's lips, his eyes frantic and almost pleading as they fixed on Crowley, and for a moment, Crowley felt like it might almost have been a relief to him, to hear his fears voiced so plainly aloud like that.

"It'd be easier, wouldn't it?" Crowley continued. "In some ways, if I could just say it like that and it'd become true. All that allegiance you're still living with, all that _faith_ \- " he said it like a dirty word, "wouldn't it be nice to put them down for a while? Take a little holiday from angeling?" Aziraphale looked like Crowley's words were tearing him apart, like a _yes_ was just seconds from tumbling from his lips, and Crowley was so close to reaching for him, for trying to comfort him in some way with the meager offering that was his touch, his small piece of this reality.

Instead, this time it was Aziraphale who lurched into him, folding himself against Crowley's body and _clinging_. Crowley let out a shaky little sigh of breath he didn't need, and he let his fingers curl into the hair at the back of Aziraphale's neck, tucking him closer and holding him.

"I don't know if this is what you want to hear or not," he said, "but you haven't Fallen."

"How do you _know_?" Aziraphale's voice was muffled against Crowley's collar.

"I don't. I've got faith."

Aziraphale let out a choked half laugh, half sob. " _You_ ," he said. "Have faith."

"Not in anything else, mind you. But in you? Always."

"Crowley!" Aziraphale's voice cracked as he raised his head, his expression a pure and dazzling combination of love and exasperated amusement. "That's blasphemy."

"Yes, well." Crowley shrugged, raising his eyebrows. "Demon."

This time when Aziraphale laughed, it sounded a little less strained, a little less broken. "I'm being ridiculous, aren't I?"

"Yes," Crowley said. "But you're allowed."

"I mean, here _you_ are. And I'm worrying that...what, I could be like you? Would that be so bad, after all?"

" _Yes_ ," Crowley said, intent, leaning in sharply. "Aziraphale. I don't want this for you. What I have, what I _am_...this isn't you. Okay, no, maybe you're not a textbook angel, but honestly, who is?"

"The archangels?" Aziraphale muttered darkly. "That's what they'd like everyone to think, at least."

"Right, yes, my mistake, everyone except for you in the heavenly rank and file is completely above reproach, aren't they? Not a sin among them. Gabriel certainly isn't at all vain, and Sandophal isn't full of wrath, and Michael's not enough of a duplicitous snake to give me competition. And Uriel...well, I actually haven't got a bad word to say about them, but I'm sure someone has. Angelic doesn't mean perfect, Aziraphale. No one is perfect. Maybe not even Her, who knows?"

" _Crowley_ ," Aziraphale said almost warningly, but instead of reproachful, he sounded amused.

"So, look, maybe your faith reserves are running a little low. Maybe hope was in the rubbish while there was an apocalypse on. But you, angel? You've never, not once in your entire existence, spent one second lacking for love. You love everything. You love so hard and so much, it's exhausting just to be around you. Tell me that doesn't matter. Tell me that you think someone like _me_ could be capable of that."

"You...love," Aziraphale said, but it was nearly a question.

"Sometimes, sure," Crowley said. "Everyone does everything sometimes. But the way you do? Constantly and effortlessly and endlessly? Nope. Not me. Not humans. Not anybody but you angel folk. Maybe some of those other bastards, they've got faith on lock, or hope. You? You've got love, and say what you will about Paul - and oh, have I got some stories - but he had a point with that whole 'the greatest of these' thing. Any other virtue without any love? What's that worth? Not much, in my book."

"I think…" Aziraphale said slowly, "I might like your book."

"You like every book," Crowley replied, and Aziraphale's real smile finally returned.

He sobered a little, eventually, sighing and settling back against the couch. "I don't know. I suppose I'm overreacting. It's just that...I felt it, Crowley. I felt Her light leave me by that garden wall, and I've never felt it again. Not once."

"And you don't think that maybe She's just busy? Got better things to do than point a cosmic flashlight in your direction to make you feel better about yourself?"

"You know that's not what it is. You know it's not like that. It's _more_ than that. It's… _everything_."

"I know." It hurt, thinking about it, the feeling of being whole and loved and treasured in a way he hadn't since long before the garden, since before humanity, before Aziraphale. He'd let himself forget ( _made_ himself forget), but it was still there inside him, the memory of being one of Hers. "I don't know what to tell you, angel. Maybe you're Fallen. Maybe you're not. Would it really change anything?"

"Crowley! It would change everything."

"Would it, though? Actually? I mean, think about it. Gabriel pops up over there - " he pointed to the corner of the shop, " - and announces 'Oh hey, Aziraphale, the memo got lost in the mail a few millennia ago, but the Deity Upstairs has given you the old boot. Au revoir!' What do you do tomorrow morning?"

"I. What? I...well, I suppose I'd do what I do any other morning."

"Yeah, you make some tea (with far too much milk in it), and you make yourself (an indecently decadent) breakfast, and you sit there at your counter and read the newspaper (on an actual piece of paper because it's apparently 1927 in here), and then you go out in the world, and you do some Good Deeds. Maybe we get dinner. That's it. That's your day. That's been your day for years, and it's going to be your day for the foreseeable future. So what? So maybe you would have survived the towering inferno of hellfire if we'd let things go that way. Maybe you are what you seem, and maybe you're not. But you're _you_ , angel. If Adam gets to choose to be a normal boy with a normal dad in a depressingly normal little town, then you get to choose to be the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Reluctant Seller of Rare Books, and Protector of London or whatever it is that you fancy you do with your time."

"Protector of London!" Aziraphale scoffed. "As if I would - " and he cut himself off, looking at Crowley. "No," he said carefully. "I suppose, when you put it that way, that there isn't much that would be different if I were to find out I had been cast from heaven for my transgressions. Only…"

"Only?" Crowley repeated.

"Well." He could see Aziraphale's cheeks going delightfully pink in the way they did when he was trying not to say something incriminating. "I suppose there are _some_ indulgences that are not quite...seemly for one of my position that may be...a bit more accepted, if...well."

"If you sunk to my level?" Crowley asked, grinning.

"Don't you dare say that!" Aziraphale objected. "That is not at all what I meant, and you know it. You are - "

"Oh, don't butter me up, angel," Crowley interrupted, waving a hand. "I know what you meant. No, no, I'm _far_ more interested in these…'indulgences.'" He eyed Aziraphale. "You can't tell me that _you_ , who go into raptures over _cheesecakes_ of all things, have never…" he wiggled his eyebrows outrageously, mostly to see Aziraphale laugh.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Aziraphale chided. "I'm not talking about _sex_."

Crowley nearly swallowed his tongue. "Wait, you. What."

"Crowley." Aziraphale looked at him with fond exasperation. "We've been on earth for how long? And you think I haven't extensively researched exactly what it is this body is capable of?"

Crowley could feel his jaw hanging open, but couldn't quite seem to do anything about it. "Hngmf," he said intelligently.

"No, of course I don't mean that," Aziraphale said dismissively, apparently completely oblivious to Crowley's distress. "I mean. Well." He raised his eyes to Crowley's, and seemed to notice for the first time that Crowley was completely undone by the thought of Aziraphale and sex appearing in the same sentence. "I mean you."

Crowley swallowed thickly. "Me," he repeated.

"You." Aziraphale said it so simply, as if it were merely a given between them, and maybe it was, but Crowley was still trying to figure out what his hands were for, where his eyes should go, and it was a damn good thing that he didn't really need his lungs, because he wasn't sure he had any. "You know it wouldn't do, Crowley," Aziraphale continued, "An angel, and a demon. It's been bad enough that we have this...'arrangement,'" he said it like the word felt distasteful in his mouth, "but you _must_ know that things would have progressed...well, much more expediently if I had been free to ignore the constraints of heaven's regulations." He looked at Crowley almost pleadingly. "You do know that, darling, don't you?"

"I. No," Crowley croaked. "I don't know that." He felt like he was falling again, like everything he'd known was being shredded under him, and at any moment gravity would take over, and he would be -

Aziraphale reached for him. 

He touched him, just lightly, his hands resting against Crowley's knees, but it grounded him, kept him steady, gave him the strength to lift his own hands to cup Aziraphale's face.

"You haven't, though," he said, and the words felt like knives, but he had to say them. "You haven't Fallen. Nothing has changed. You're still an angel, and I'm still a demon, and everything is the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the centuries before that."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed. "And yesterday, I loved you. The day before that, I loved you. Centuries ago, millennia ago - " He leaned into the touch of Crowley's hand against his cheek. "If I have Fallen, I have Fallen. If I have remained in God's graces, I have done so while loving you."

" _Angel_." The word escaped from Crowley without his permission, breathed out like a benediction, and when he leaned in to capture Aziraphale's mouth with his, there was still a part of him that expected the thunderclap, the lightning bolt, the heavenly host descending upon them to wreak vengeance for their transgressions.

Instead, Aziraphale's fingers tightened through his trousers, his lips parted against Crowley's, and the sound he let out into Crowley's mouth was delicious and unfathomable.

"No smiting," Crowley said eventually, against Aziraphale's lips, the two of them folded together so tightly that he wasn't even sure the rest of the universe still existed around them. 

"Well, I suppose that means one of two things," Aziraphale said, barely pulling back. "Either the smiting has already happened, or…" he leaned in to kiss Crowley again, almost hungrily. "Or She approves."

"Oh," Crowley said, grimacing, "don't do that. I don't want Her _approving_ of me, that wouldn't go over at all well with...well, anyone. Me included."

"All right, She doesn't object, then," Aziraphale clarified. 

"And if it turns out that She does?" Crowley asked. He began to feel the edges of panic creep in. "I won't have you Fall for me, angel. I can't."

"Too late." Aziraphale's lips found his again. "I have fallen for you. It's done."

"I mean - "

"I know what you mean." Aziraphale pulled back to look at him seriously. "If I have been cast out, Crowley, it was for choices that I made that had nothing to do with you. I gifted humanity with a heavenly weapon long before they were prepared for it - if such a time would have ever existed - and then I lied in the face of the Almighty about my choice to do so. I have performed temptations in the service of Hell. Not," he added, seeing Crowley open his mouth to object, "because you asked me to, but because I did not genuinely believe that my blessings would do anything to counteract them. I helped thwart the apocalypse that by all accounts was part of some Divine Plan. I doubt. I question, if only to myself. I lack faith. You? Crowley, you are the least of my sins."

"That might be," Crowley said, "the most insultingly sweet thing anyone has ever said to me," and he leaned in to kiss Aziraphale again.

They held each other there in the dim light of the bookshop - on the couch which had grown plusher and deeper as they tangled against each other, until there was more than enough room for them both to sprawl out together, even with all of Crowley's absurd limbs - and Crowley's lips were pressed against the skin of Aziraphale's throat as he said, "I think you should show me what you learned in your studies."

Aziraphale's laugh was deep and delighted. "Not all in one night, darling. I think even our stamina may not be up for that."

His hands went to Crowley's shirt, though, careful with the buttons in the way that only someone who spent actual human money on his clothing would be, and Crowley considered ripping Aziraphale out of his, but the way that Aziraphale's breath caught as he very carefully undid his tie, his fingers moving so softly and gently to the buttons, made him rethink the whole plan. He should have known that sartorial care would have been a turn-on to this ridiculous angel, but it still made him laugh, his eyes catching Aziraphale's over the expanse of his body, both of them grinning and absurd and _joyful_ in a way that Crowley wasn't sure he had ever felt, not on earth, certainly not in hell, and maybe not even in heaven.

The changes that Crowley regularly made with his hair, Aziraphale made with his form, and today he was softly curved under the layers of his clothes when Crowley's hands found his skin. "Mm, I like you like this, angel," Crowley said, leaning down to press his lips to a breast, feeling Aziraphale twist and squirm under him. "I like you like everything."

"You've noticed," Aziraphale said, sounding faintly surprised. "But we haven't ever - "

"I look, angel," Crowley objected. "I see you."

"You do," Aziraphale agreed, and dragged Crowley in for another greedy kiss.

It wasn't heaven, his skin against Aziraphale's, their hands and mouths all over each other. It wasn't anything so prosaic or simple as that. It was six thousand years of history, lifetimes of knowing each other, loving each other, intertwining so tightly with each other that the tangling of their corporeal forms might as well have been an afterthought.

It wasn't, though, in that moment. It was the _only_ thought, the only thing that existed in Crowley's universe, the feeling of Aziraphale's hands gripping his hair, his perfect gasps and half-formed words wringing everything out of Crowley, turning him into nothing but pure sensation before they both flared out into endless galaxies, existing within and between each other for eons.

His face was pressed to the crook of Aziraphale's shoulder when he finally dragged his eyes open, Aziraphale's fingers tracing letters in a language he didn't know across his back. 

"What're you writing?" he asked, voice trapped somewhere against Aziraphale's skin, and he could feel Aziraphale's mouth curve into a smile where it rested atop his head. 

"A promise."

"Not casting some kind of angel spell on me, are you?" Crowley asked sleepily, then raised his head sharply. "Wait, you're not _blessing_ me, are you?"

Aziraphale laughed. "Heaven forbid. No, Crowley. I'm being...sentimental."

"Ick." Crowley made a face at him and buried his face against Aziraphale's chest. He lay there for a long moment before deciding that he missed the feeling of Aziraphale's fingers gliding across his skin. "Well, all right then," he muttered, "go on," and Aziraphale laughed before reaching to continue.

Time passed, and Crowley's eyelids grew heavy, so he finally mumbled, "Don't take it as an insult, but I'm going to fall asleep on you, angel."

"I think I should take trust as the highest of compliments, shouldn't I?" Aziraphale asked.

"Trust," Crowley scoffed. "Bullshit sentiment." But he closed his eyes, and let Aziraphale's body take his weight. "Hey," he said, an indeterminate amount of time later - maybe seconds, maybe decades - "you didn't get, y'know." He waved a hand. "Smote. Smitten. Smat."

"I didn't," Aziraphale agreed, sounding amused.

"How 'bout that. You did get to choose things after all."

"For now, yes," Aziraphale said. "For now, we live as if the world has ended, because it has. Our world, the one we lived in since the beginning, the one where heaven and hell mean anything at all to us, that world is over."

Crowley yawned. "Nah," he said. "It means something to you. 't's okay. It can. Just, you know. Maybe it doesn't have to mean everything."

Aziraphale was quiet for a long moment before Crowley felt his fingers curl into Crowley's hair, brushing it slowly and soothingly. "No," he agreed, "it certainly doesn't mean everything."

Crowley closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of Aziraphale's warmth against him, his fingers in Crowley's hair, their bodies pleasantly exhausted, their minds as close to at peace as they could get, and eventually, he drifted off to the sound of Aziraphale murmuring softly against him. 

It was only just before he faded from consciousness that he realized the words were a prayer.


End file.
